While we all agree on the good intentions of SB 623 to assist disadvantaged communities with accessing safe drinking water, we can’t agree on imposing the first-ever statewide tax on water bills of California homes and businesses.
However, taxing Californians’ drinking water is not the right approach for addressing this issue.
Adding a statewide tax to local water bills is just not sound policy.
Furthermore, the process through which this tax has been proposed is also problematic.
Proponents say they have been negotiating for months, but the tax was amended to this bill just a week ago.
Not only did this preclude the public and stakeholder groups from examining the tax and weighing in, but it also prevented proper vetting before all applicable committees.
To impose a statewide tax on Californians’ water bills would turn local water agencies into taxation entities that send money to Sacramento.
Also concerning is the fact that this tax would be precedent setting.
ACWA supports funding safe drinking water solutions for disadvantaged communities with General Fund dollars, packaged together with ongoing federal safe drinking water funds, general obligation bond funds, and the new agriculture-proposed assessment related to nitrates in groundwater.
The best way our state can help our most vulnerable communities access safe drinking water is by raising this issue to the same priority level as other critical public health and social issues, and that means making a general fund solution a reality.

To date, a large number of people are still reported missing and an estimated 6,000 altogether have been affected by the destruction.
Following a needs assessments coordinated by the government of Sierra Leone, Action Against Hunger and key partners[1] quickly mobilized resources and launched a response to the emergency.
“The most urgent and immediate needs of people affected by these massive floods are safe drinking water, access to sanitation facilities, shelter, medication, blankets and psychological support.
Disease outbreaks, especially cholera, are a big threat that will require joint efforts from all of us to protect the health of those at risk,” said Action Against Hunger Country Director for Sierra Leone, Abdelgadir Ahmed.
To respond to people’s most urgent needs for daily supplies of safe drinking water, the government and Action Against Hunger’s partners are installing eight water tanks of 5,000 liters in the affected communities.
In parallel, Action Against Hunger has already delivered emergency hygiene kits to 200 families to improve sanitation and health.
Action Against Hunger also delivered supplies of bottled water to 74 families to meet their urgent daily needs while the water kiosks are being installed.
Action Against Hunger is also conducting hygiene promotion sessions with families affected by the floods to prevent outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera.
Ensuring that communities at risk have access to safe water, soap, and information about the importance of handwashing to prevent disease can help reduce the risk of outbreaks and illness enormously.
[1] Action Against Hunger is a partner of the Sierra Leone WASH Consortium, which is comprised of four humanitarian organizations with expertise in water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions.

Starting life strong in slums: the role of engaging vulnerable groups on sanitation and nutrition.
For example, forthcoming World Bank research from Bangladesh shows that children living in slums are 50 percent more likely to be stunted than children living in other urban areas.
Tragically, these effects are often passed on to offspring, trapping families in poverty and malnutrition for generations, as per findings in a forthcoming World Bank report called Uncharted Waters.
Improvements in sanitation are a necessary but insufficient contribution to eliminate stunting and malnutrition among the urban poor.
Following the recommendations of the just launched report on WASH Poverty Diagnostic, the water, sanitation, health and nutrition sectors need to work jointly to ensure that improvements in WASH services and nutritious food systems translate into improvements in child health.
We recommend the following three actions: Firstly, nutrition and WASH services need to be inclusive of all groups to have the greatest impact on child nutrition.
In Ethiopia, a new Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Project includes support to slum areas and uses urban health extension workers to carry out sanitation and hygiene behavior change.
One of the key components of this program is the establishment of a sustainable supply chain of household drinking water filters that help households to filter their tap, well or rain water without the need to boil or use electricity.
Another key component of the Baduta project in Indonesia is a behavior change campaign called Rumpi Sehat (Healthy Gossip), designed to promote exclusive breastfeeding, optimal complementary feeding and safe WASH practices.
Today, at Stockholm World Water Week, stakeholders from the water and nutrition sectors are coming together to discuss the evidence, policy and practice examples of how we can effectively address stunting in slums and informal settlements.

UNICEF provides water kits, hygiene kits, temporary sanitation facilities for Marawi.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Tuesday said they are working hand-in-hand with other partners to address the concern on the lack of access to basic drinking water of chidlren affected by the Marawi siege.
“In response to the Marawi conflict, UNICEF has been working with the government and NGO [non-governmental organization] partners with support from the Government of Japan and the United Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund to address critical needs of displaced children and their families, providing water kits, hygiene kits and temporary sanitation facilities," UNICEF Philippines Representative Lotta Sylwander said in a statement.
“Children’s access to safe water and sanitation, especially in conflicts and emergencies, is a right, not a privilege,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF’s global chief of water, sanitation and hygiene.
More than 180 million people around the world affected by conflict, violence, and instability do not have access to basic drinking water, UNICEF warned on Tuesday, as World Water Week approaches.
According to a recent UNICEF and World Health Organization (WHO) analysis, of the estimated 484 million people living in fragile situations in 2015, a total of 183 million lacked access to basic drinking water.
In the Philippines, Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has the lowest coverage of basic drinking water services and sanitation facilities, UNICEF said.
According to UNICEF, "Only 62% of households in ARMM have access to basic water services and only 22% of households have their own hygienic toilets (compared to, respectively, 91% and 75% at the national level)."
When children have no safe water to drink, and when health systems are left in ruins, malnutrition and potentially fatal diseases like cholera will inevitably follow,” said Wijesekera.
—Akari Nakano/KG, GMA News

Trading booze for water.
Joe Amon / The Denver Post) Big Colorado brewers are pitching in to make access to clean water fall lower on the list of things people affected by devastating flooding in Texas have to worry about.
Oskar Blues Brewery shut down beer production in Longmont Tuesday afternoon, filling 88,800 cans with safe water.
Trucks are estimated to arrive in Texas later in the week.
Broomfield-based Ball Corp. donated the cans and the brewery’s the CAN’d Aid Foundation will make sure it reaches the people who need it most.
We’ve gotten pretty good at this," Oskar Blues spokesman Chad Melis said.
The brewery first became involved in disaster outreach when calamity hit home.
Oskar Blues isn’t the only brewery to respond with canned water donations.
Ball Corp. also partnered with MillerCoors to can emergency drinking water.
Water canned at the Revolver brewery, about 275 miles northwest of Houston, will be trucked to Red Cross shelters set up in southeast Texas, the region hit hardest by the devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey.

While we all agree on the good intentions of SB 623 to assist disadvantaged communities with accessing safe drinking water, we can’t agree on imposing the first-ever statewide tax on water bills of California homes and businesses.
However, taxing Californians’ drinking water is not the right approach for addressing this issue.
Adding a statewide tax to local water bills is just not sound policy.
Furthermore, the process through which this tax has been proposed is also problematic.
Proponents say they have been negotiating for months, but the tax was amended to this bill just a week ago.
Not only did this preclude the public and stakeholder groups from examining the tax and weighing in, but it also prevented proper vetting before all applicable committees.
To impose a statewide tax on Californians’ water bills would turn local water agencies into taxation entities that send money to Sacramento.
Also concerning is the fact that this tax would be precedent setting.
ACWA supports funding safe drinking water solutions for disadvantaged communities with General Fund dollars, packaged together with ongoing federal safe drinking water funds, general obligation bond funds, and the new agriculture-proposed assessment related to nitrates in groundwater.
The best way our state can help our most vulnerable communities access safe drinking water is by raising this issue to the same priority level as other critical public health and social issues, and that means making a general fund solution a reality.

Bushfire alert: Wattle Camp residents evacuated.
FIREFIGHTERS battling to stop fires reaching homes at Wattle Creek near Kingaroy say the threat has receded for the moment, but residents need to remain vigilant.
Queensland Fire and Emergency Service said in its 5.45pm bulletin: “A bushfire remains active in the Wattle Camp area and firefighters are currently backburning and constructing fire breaks in an attempt to control the blaze.
Queensland Fire and Emergency Service issued an evacuation to the town of Wattle Camp this afternoon because of worsening conditions.
Residents were advised to call triple-0 immediately if they felt they were under threat.
•Listen to your local radio station or visit the Rural Fire Service (RFS) website for regular updates.
•Take your important documents and essential items (e.g., passports, birth certificates, prescription medication, food and water, and protective clothing) when you leave.
•Drive with caution in low visibility conditions.
If you are not leaving: •Bring pets inside; restrain them with a leash, a cage, or inside a secure room; and provide them with plenty of water.
•Fill containers such as your bath, sinks, and buckets with water so you have access to drinking water and firefighting water.

Africa: In Crisis-Torn Countries, Children’s Access to Safe Water and Sanitation Is a Right, Not a Privilege – Unicef.
"Children’s access to safe water and sanitation, especially in conflicts and emergencies, is a right, not a privilege" said Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF’s global chief of water, sanitation and hygiene, who warned, as World Water Week gets underway, that more than 180 million people in crisis-torn countries have no access to drinking water.
UNICEF said that in Yemen, a country reeling from the impact of over two years of conflict, water supply networks that serve the country’s largest cities are at imminent risk of collapse due to war-inflicted damage and disrepair.
Around 15 million people in the country have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation.
As for Syria, where the conflict is well into its seventh year, around 15 million people are in need of safe water, including an estimated 6.4 million children.
The UN agency adds that in South Sudan, where fighting has raged for over three years, almost half the water points across the country have been damaged or completely destroyed.
"In far too many cases, water and sanitation systems have been attacked, damaged or left in disrepair to the point of collapse.
Somalia is suffering from the largest outbreak of cholera in the last five years, with nearly 77,000 cases of suspected cholera/acute watery diarrhoea.
And in South Sudan, the cholera outbreak is the most severe the country has ever experienced, with more than 19,000 cases since June 2016, said UNICEF.
In famine-threatened north-east Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, nearly 30 million people, including 14.6 million children, are in urgent need of safe water.

Colorado brewers halt production to can water for hurricane-ravaged Texas.
Floodwaters have breached a levee south of the city of Houston, officials said Tuesday, urging residents to leave the area immediately.
Oskar Blues Brewery shut down beer production in Longmont Tuesday afternoon, filling 88,800 cans with safe water.
Broomfield-based Ball Corp. donated the cans and the brewery’s the CAN’d Aid Foundation will make sure it reaches the people who need it most.
We’ve gotten pretty good at this,” Oskar Blues spokesman Chad Melis said.
Oskar Blues isn’t the only brewery to respond with canned water donations.
“We are answering the American Red Cross’ call for clean, safe drinking water by sending three truckloads – more than 150,000 cans – that will be distributed to communities in need,” Anheuser-Busch spokesman Bill Bradley in a written statement.
Ball Corp. also partnered with MillerCoors to can emergency drinking water.
Water canned at the Revolver brewery, about 275 miles northwest of Houston, will be trucked to Red Cross shelters set up in southeast Texas, the region hit hardest by the devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey.
Oskar Blues’ CAN’d Aid Foundation is collecting donations through its website.

A regional initiative benefits communities across Latin America and the Caribbean 30 August 2017, Rome – As the international community gathers this week in Stockholm for World Water Week, we profile a cooperative effort by FAO and the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation to make water more accessible to vulnerable and water-scarce rural communities in a number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Mesoamerica Hunger-Free programme helps these communities to harvest rainwater and put it to good use as a source of safe, drinkable water and for irrigation during times of drought.
Focus on Colombia In Colombia, FAO is working to turn rainwater into safe, drinkable water for schoolchildren on San Andres Island – a Colombian island in the Caribbean Sea – and for vulnerable indigenous communities in the Amazonas region, in the south of mainland Colombia.
More than 1,800 people, including school children and some 600 indigenous community members in Amazonas will benefit.
Recent surveys in the Amazonas found that 88 percent of the families were collecting rainwater in precarious conditions and drinking it without purifying it first.
Thanks to the new system, rainwater is collected and stored in cisterns made of concrete.
The water is then pumped to a tank and chlorinated through several filters.
Safe water can be scarce on San Andres and the price of bottled water is high.
From Stockholm, FAO and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) released initial findings from a major review of the latest science on global water pollution from a food and agricultural perspective.
See here for more information on FAO’s activities during World Water Week.